: Leymah Gbowee, who received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2011, is a peace activist, trained social worker and women’s rights advocate. She currently serves as Executive Director of the Women, Peace and Security Program at Columbia University’s Earth Institute, and is the founder and current President of the Gbowee Peace Foundation Africa, the founding head of the Liberia Reconciliation Initiative,and co-founder and former Executive Director of Women Peace and Security Network Africa (WIPSEN-A). She is also a founding member and former Liberian Coordinator of Women in Peacebuilding Network/West Africa Network for Peacebuilding (WIPNET/WANEP). Ms. Gbowee’s leadership of the Women of Liberia Mass Action for Peace – which brought together Christian and Muslim women in a nonviolent movement that played a pivotal role in ending Liberia’s civil war in 2003 – is chronicled in her memoir, Mighty Be Our Powers: How Sisterhood, Prayer, and Sex Changed a Nation at War, and in the award-winning documentary, Pray the Devil Back to Hell. She holds an M.A. in Conflict Transformation and a Doctor of Laws honoris causa.
Ms. Gbowee is an advisor for numerous organizations, and has held distinguished fellowships at Barnard College and Union Theological Seminary. She serves as a Sustainable Development Goals Advocate for the United Nations and as a Member of the World Refugee Council. In 2016, she was awarded the Lifetime Africa Achievement Prize for Peace in Africa by the Millennium Excellence Foundation. In 2017, she was selected by the UN Secretary General to serve as a Member of his High Level Advisory Board on Mediation. In 2018, she was appointed to the G7 Gender Equality Advisory Council during Canada’s G7 Presidency.
Leymah will be speaking at the E. N. Thompson Forum on World Issues on “Mighty Be Our Powers: Building Women, Building Peace” on October 2nd at 6:00 p.m.